IRONTON -- OF SWEET LONG AGO
THE IRONTON NEWS
 January 23, 1929

Items that Irontonians Read in The Ironton Weekly
Register During the Year 1872.
Submitted by Tom Everett

The churches are among the most vital and important of the community's interests. Their influence is widely extended and their benefits like the blessings of light, air and water, are so common that scarcely any notice is taken of them. We speak from a Second Street Standpoint. Churches are good in themselves. Commerce, Manufacture and Society partake of their advantages and hardly an idle recognition of their sources of how their dissemination is maintained.

Through considerable pains we are enabled this week, to give to our readers a few facts concerning our religious institutions; their membership, cost of preaching, strength of Sabbath Schools and the Church debts, premising that our facts came from the ministers who kindly met our request to furnish them.

Ironton has a population of about 8,000. The churches in active operation are to the number of 12. The Church membership, Catholic and Protestant foots up to 2,876 or one third of the entire population. The total amount of money expended last year was $16,673 or about $2 to each man, woman and child.

We speak first of the Protestant Churches, taking their past year as a criterion; Their membership numbers 1,126 all told. These churches pay out for preachers' salaries $843 a year, which range from $33 to $1,500. They disburse for light, fuel, janitors, and other running expenses $1,400 per annum. Other collections for charities, improvements and etc., amounted to $4,504. Their debt is $2,900. The average attendance at all the Sabbath Schools is given at 952.

There are as near as we can learn 1,000 members of St. Lawrence Church. The German Catholic Church reports 750 members which gives the Catholic membership in Ironton at 1,750, a large number of the Catholic membership reside outside the city. We now give the figures pertaining to each Church.